5 technologies predicted by Minority Report that we’re using today

Since the dawn of cinema, many movies have been able to predict the future, but not many have been able to do it as accurately as Minority Report. Steven Spielberg’s game-changing sci-fi film came out 16 years ago, so we’re looking back at all the tech the film predicted would exist in its 2054 dystopian society… and how most of it has become a reality by 2018!

The neo-noir movie tells the story of a specialised police department called PreCrime, based in Washington D.C., that apprehends criminals based on foreknowledge provided by three psychics called ‘precogs’. Tom Cruise is our lead star, playing the role of Chief of PreCrime John Anderton. It focuses on the question: can free will really exist if the future is known in advance? And does knowing the future mean that it’s possible to change it, thus rendering PreCrime invalid?

We could, literally, be here all day long debating the movie, but it’s time to talk about technology! Did you know that, before the film’s production began, director Steven Spielberg invited 15 experts to think about technologies that would be developed by 2054? This is what they came up with:

Multi-touch interfaces & gesture recognition

Multi-touch technology enables a surface, such as a trackpad or a touchscreen, to recognise the presence of more than one or two points of contact with the surface – like, for example, when you use two fingers to zoom in on a photo on your smartphone. The technology has been under development since the 1970s and is massively used these days.

However, the most iconic scene in Minority Report is probably any of the scenes where John Anderton uses gesture recognition to swipe and move things around in a screen. Although this seemed like science fiction back in 2002, gesture recognition has since become a reality, even if not a mainstream one, with organisations like Microsoft and Intel dedicating time and resources to develop this technology.


Personalised advertising

Although we already have a taste of what personalised advertising looks like – have you ever been looking for a product on Amazon to then see that same product advertised on Facebook? Yup! –Minority Report takes it to a whole other level. In one of the scenes, the film shows John moving around the city while ads are being displayed in front of him and a voice shouts for his attention. Thankfully, we’re not quite there yet!


Insect robots

All kinds of robots are being developed these days, from humanoid machines like Boston Dynamic’s Atlas to tiny insect spy robots being developed by the United States military. The latter will be able to take part in reconnaissance missions in dangerous areas!

Autonomous cars

Do you remember the scene where John Anderton jumps through a “highway” of driverless cars? In the film, the fuel-cell powered autonomous vehicles, designed by Lexus, can be driven both manually or autonomously.

This technology has been in development since 1984, but it only really picked up after 2000, with the advancement of artificial intelligence and ground-sensing technologies. Still today, major players like Google or Tesla keep trying to perfect their self-driving cars, in the hope that they will one day become mainstream and make our roads safer.


Retina scanners

This form of biometrics already existed in 2002, when the film came out, but retina scanners have certainly evolved massively over the last 16 years. An American company called Global Rainmakers Incorporated (GRI) has been developing the technology for the banking and defence industries, and they predict that their scanners will work in the same way as the Minority Report technology by 2054.

Besides these five technologies, the movie also featured crime predicting software and e-papers, which have been under development over the last decades. IBM developed a software called Blue Crime Reduction Utilising Statistical History (CRUSH), using predictive analysis based on data and algorithms, to predict and prevent crime. The tool was tested in Memphis, in the United States, where it led to a 31% drop in serious crime!

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